short steps, deep breaths
by authenticaussie
Summary: Mother and son are separated by a lie that isn't uncovered until twenty years after his birth.


**AN: _don't make dead rouge jokes I get upset_**

 **Title taken from the song ' _Everything's Alright'_ by _To the Moon_**

* * *

Rouge being alive in canon!verse and actually thinking that Ace died as a baby, and Garp never tells Ace any different, so they both grow older thinking that the other is dead and Ace's life continues as canon while Rouge goes to work for the Revolutionary Army and fights for people to be safe from the World Government and not feel as fucking _afraid_ as she did when she was pregnant with Ace, for the rights of people who get _stepped on_ by the World Government because they're small and not that powerful in comparison to people like Akainu and even Sengoku, marines who view others as pawns instead of _people_.

Finding out that Ace is alive when they announce his _execution,_ finding out that he _kept her name,_ (well, of course he did, it wouldn't be safe for him to be called Gol. D. Ace, but God, he _kept her name-_ )

(Finding out she's to far away, finding out where it is and when it is and knowing nothing short of a miracle will get her there in time, but praying for one anyway. Praying for _another,_ anyway, because it was a miracle that _her son_ was still alive, still breathing, and she would do _anything_ to keep it that way-)

(Finding a smoking, torn-up battleground. Finding bodies and tombstones. Finding the tattered remains of flags and water-logged pieces of ship's timber and the rubble of destroyed buildings and the walls Ace's crew had destroyed to get to him.

Finding Ace's name written in the obituary of the newspapers.)

Knowing that her son is _dead_ as she stares at a stone-white marker, the evidence of his life.

It's better than the one she had given him,she thinks in the back of her head, and replaces the child wrapped in a shroud of soft blue blankets with this testament, covered with flowers of every shape and size and colour. It is peaceful here, as opposed to the island she had fled after his birth, and Ace is laid next to the grave of a man she had respected from rumours but never met personally, and God, what would have changed if she had-?

Remembering how the blue blankets had sunk below the waters off the shore of an island she would never be able to name, or return to, for the fear that the villagers would recognise her and what she had brought into their midst (the marines had never, ever stopped chasing her, with hands so large they encapsulated the sky she slept under, and what was a tiny island to the footsteps of a giant that didn't care for ants?)

Following the footsteps of the men who had come to save Ace when she hadn't been able to, finding their stories and hearing the cracking sounds her heart made as it broke _,_ because her son had been living with the belief that his father was detestable, that his mother had left him in this world alone, that no-one loved him ( _she_ did, oh God did she love him, she had _wanted_ to love him, she had wanted to see every one of his first steps and hear his first words and brush away his tears and bandage his cuts and scrapes and kiss away his bad dreams, Rouge had wanted to be his _mother-_ )

Hunting down the marines who had been present at Ace's execution _,_ (his funeral came after, when he was surrounded by the people he'd lived his life by, and Rouge had been unable to see _that,_ either.

She'd never been in his life, after all, and maybe there was some justice to never being able to see her son's last smile, or brush the wayward curls from his closed eyes.)

Every step she takes leads her through the people who had hurt her son, (through, because she tore through them and doesn't bother with mercy or blame, because these were the same men who thought it was _justice_ for her son to die wearing a name he'd so obviously despised.

(She wished, more than anything, that he hadn't, that she'd been there to set the stories straight, to tell him of all the wonderous things his father had done, but she knew that even that may not have changed his mind.

And she knew that he didn't deserve to die under his father's mantle. She had run to protect him from it, after all.)

She does not mean to find Garp.

She does not _want_ to find Garp, because she needs the burning anger in her chest and she knows if she sees him it will overflow, it will roar from her with all the fury of the fire that Ace had possessed-

(It is worse. Like burning alive, like her insides are melting from the heat of it, the fury of it, the pain of it, and she _screams_ when she sees him, and he does not move.)

She beats him bloody, hears his bones crack under her hands, salt and sweat and tears mixing with dirt and blood and skin stuck under her broken fingernails, she screams and screams and screams and screams and it _hurts._

It shocks her, how much it hurts, because she had never seen Ace, had never known him as well as anyone else had, and-

Maybe that was why.

She was never given the chance to know her son, because Garp had _stolen him._ He'd told her that her son was dead. He'd taken her child away, raised him to hate his blood and his body and his smile, because it matched his father's, he knew they both lived but never gave them the chance to live with one another, never gave the brightest star in Rouge's sky the chance to meet his father's moon, never given Rouge the chance to help build Ace's galaxy.

 _How dare he take my son. How dare he **know** about Ace's execution and never **tell me-!**_

 _How dare he let me live and think my son was **dead!**_

How dare he not tell her of Ace's execution, and give her the chance to _save him._

How _dare he,_ she thinks, fills another scream with her rage and her sorrow and breaks something else (maybe it's him, maybe it's her - she's lost the feeling in her knuckles but thinks maybe the flash of white beneath furious red is bone instead of skin.)

Her knees buckle, and she knows that if he could move Garp would stretch out a hand to catch her before she hit the ground.

He doesn't, and she's comforted by the fact he cannot move, cannot breathe without wheezing through the blood in his lungs. (She has ruined the people's hero, and is bitterly glad for it - he has ruined her.)

The edges of her dress do not flutter in the breeze that springs up as she slowly collapses; it is too heavy with blood and sweat and mud, but the breeze cools the concoction and presses it to the back of her legs, cold against muscles that shake with heat and exhaustion.

It is no longer fury that burns inside her; only fatigue makes her muscles shake. ( _Anything is better than emptiness,_ she pleads to the sky and the sea and everything she can think of inbetween that she has pledged her life too, but her heart has collapsed in on itself, and she is a dying star, her insides cold and constricting with every breath she takes.)

She cannot move with the pain of it, and wonders if Garp knows his only saving grace has come in the form of her relentless, paralyzing grief.

Wiping away tears makes the bruises on her cheek ache, but she cannot leave them there to stain. Enough of her has already been irreparably broken; to leave such an obvious mark in the dirt on her face (to obscure the freckles that Ace had inherited-)

She is stronger than gravity, in the end, but only just. Her legs shake as she gets up, hours later, and she spares Garp one glance.

He holds her gaze for only a second, then cannot bear it.

"I'm- sorry, Rouge." He whispers to the blood-stained dust, and red drips from his mouth with every word. "I'm so, so-"

"Not sorry enough to be guilty for it," she says hoarsely, and when he flinches she knows she's right.

She takes a step, and then another, forcing her body to stay upright even as her balance sways. He looks up at her, and squints, her shadow falling over his face, and she wonders at the angles of it, knows she is in the darkness to him, but he is in the darkness to her; who, truly, is in the right in this instance?

(She had never belonged to the light, never found her calling in bounty posters or as the hero of stories, but in this one moment she wishes that she had.

That her allegiances had let a child grow unencumbered, beloved and adored, instead of hidden away from a world that had hated the thought of him. Wishes that the path she had chosen had brought her just a bit closer to the light, to where Ace had picked his future.)

"Where will you go?" Garp asks, and she pauses, lifting her eyes to the sky. "What will you do?"

Her soft answer makes him flinch, shoulders tightening, and he can no longer look up at her, his muscles shaking.

Her first step is across his clenched fist, flattening it to an open palm, and she remembers how grateful she had been to see the callouses twenty years ago.

She wonders if Ace had ever thought the same, and presses down harder, longing to leave a scar; a warning; a sign saying, _this man lied._

 _This man hurt me._

 _This man tore apart a family for nothing more than what he thought was **right**._

 _This man thought he was **right.**_

 _(This man still thinks he was **right.** )_

She keeps walking, and tries to match every breath to a footstep. Reminds herself that her lungs still work and her feet still work, and that it is time to get to know her son. ( _Twenty years late,_ she thinks, and then some part of her laughs bitterly and replies, _better late than never.)_

Her steps lead her down the path of the son she'd never known, following it backwards from brother to brother, from what he'd done to protect his family and what he'd done to avenge it, to tiny towns and sprawling cities, to people who spat his name or whispered it, but all who held it up to the sun with some sort of reverence, like he'd been an offering that they needed to give back.

(Every time they say his name, she can hear the pity and the pain, the remorse and the guilt.

She wonders what they hear when she says, _Portgas D. Ace._ Wonders if they can hear her longing to say _my son._

She wonders if they know how many times she's whispered it to herself while curled into a ball in her cabin, tears pouring down her cheeks and hands cupped together as though she were holding onto how the words needed to be said.)

Rouge runs into one of his brothers, once. She says, "sorry."

Then she says, "thanks."

He grins, but it doesn't quite erase the pain in his eyes, and his fingertips brush her freckles. He pauses, and then his hand goes to a strawhat that makes Rouge's heart ache in recognition. "I'm proud to be his brother," he says slowly, as though he isn't quite sure how to get it out, and then exhales loudly. "He loved you a lot, lady."

"I'm sorry," she repeats softly, because she cannot very well say _I know._

He smiles again, just as painfully as the first time, and scratches the tip of his nose. "He thought you were dead."

"I thought the same of him," she admits, and there's a moment of realisation on his face. His grin returns, as bright as sunshine ( _as bright as Roger's,_ she thinks and then her thoughts pause. _As bright as Ace's?_ )

"You woulda' liked him," he says, "I did."

Rouge doesn't point out that everyone's experiences are different, and maybe she _wouldn't_ have liked him (she doubts that, so very, very much,) or maybe he wouldn't have liked her (which seems much more likely, considering that she'd-)

"I'm sure I would have." She says, and cannot think of what more to say. How else to tell this boy that she was so _sorry_ that she'd never been there, that she hadn't been racing to save Ace alongside him, that she wished Ace had never met this boy, because then he would have been by her side instead of in a forest far from where she'd wanted to raise him.

He nods, and looks at her for a moment, as though waiting to see if she wants to say - or ask - anything else. When she cannot move, he purses his lips and blows irately through them, obviously thinking hard. Then, he grabs his hat and digs around the brim, pulling out a small piece of paper she easily recognises as vivre paper. He tears off a section and hands it to her, uncaring of how easily he hands over something she could use to trap him.

"If you need it, I guess." He says with a shrug, and Rouge feels her heart clench as he turns on his heel and waves at his crew, stretching to fling himself into their midst and hearing their muffled cries carried to her by the wind.

 _I was proud to be his brother,_ she thinks, and tries not to feel her chest aching at the reminder that Ace's life had touched people that she would never meet. That _Ace_ never would've met if she'd raised him, like she'd wanted.

(The other says the same thing, in one of their many conversations. She does, after all, work with him, and so it is easy to trade tales when they have the time.

Still, she does start their first conversation the same way; says the same thing to him as she did to the other.

His reply is a smile just as pained as the Pirate King's, but he does not give her proof of his life and instead asks her softly,

"Would you like to hear a story?"

(She does not - cannot - say no, and finds about how her boy had spent his childhood. Hears about his first friend and his first broken bone and his first taste of alcohol, hears about the child hidden in the heart of the man everyone else had told her about.

When he is done, she smiles through her tears, and says again, _thank you for loving him._ )

* * *

 _"Where will you go? What will you do?"_

" _To know my son? Everywhere. Anywhere. What will I do?"_

 _"Wonder if I would have been a good mother."_


End file.
